Supreme Court Declines to Entertain Notion of AI Authorship

The US Supreme Court won’t take up a computer scientist’s petition to consider whether artificial intelligence can be deemed an author under US copyright law.

Stephen Thaler argued the US Copyright Office, a district court, and an appeals court all impermissibly read a human authorship requirement into copyright law. The agency and courts refused to allow registration of the visual work “A Recent Entrance to Paradise” with his Creativity Machine as the author.

The high court’s decision ends a case that raised novel questions about authorship requirements under the Copyright Act. The Copyright Office will register AI-aided works. But it ...